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I watched Danger!! Death Ray earlier today. It's a Spanish/Italian film, dubbed into English and efficiently riffed by the MST3K crew. It's a European-style James Bond-ish film with a spy named Bart Fargo. Unfortunately.

The film starts off with a scientist inventing a death ray for world peace. At the demonstration, the scientist is kidnapped and his project hijacked. So Bart Fargo is called in to save the day. He has several adventures, and most of the women get away from him. So in that way, it's not like an old James Bond film. It also has the best miniatures I've ever seen (end sarcasm). Seriously, I could do their special effects in my tub. As Mike and the 'bots put it "Special effects by Billy!"

I give this movie five empty seats, one for each of the Bond films that came out before this one, and had the director paid attention, would have made this a better picture.

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This morning I watched Red Zone Cuba, also known as Night Train to Mundo Fine. Whatever name it is known under, it universally stinks. This movie starred its director, who I'm pretty sure had no script or real plot idea when he started filming this movie. I'm also pretty sure he didn't have either at the end.

Griffin is an escaped con that joins up with two other ex-cons, they get shanghaied into fighting Castro in Cuba (momentarily, anyway), escape back to the same town they left, throw the father of a blind woman down a mine shaft, then drive up into the mountains and get shot. Yup, that about sums it up.

I could smell the stench of this movie emanating from my TV it was that horrible, but the riffing was funny. I give it three empty seats in honor of the three stooges, one of whom (Curly) the director/actor resembled.

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Last night while waiting for Lorien to get home I watched High School Big Shot, a 1950's era movie about a smart kid with a bum father. When a girl comes on to him, the kid is too stupid to realize she's just using him to pass her English class. But he writes her paper, the teacher knows what's going on, and stops the kid's college scholarship chances. Meanwhile, the kids father doesn't work, bums money off the kid, and chugs booze. The kid hears his boss talking about a million dollar drug deal he's doing, so the kid hatches a plan to steal the money from his boss to buy his girl's love. He brings in a couple of guys that can help him crack the safe, and they steal the money, but the quasi-girlfriend tells her real boyfriend about the score so they show up with guns and take the money from the kid and his team. The boyfriend shoots a guy, then shoots the girlfriend for "making him shoot" someone. Then the real drug dealers show up, the kid gets shot, and the cops show up. The father, meanwhile, has hung himself from the chandelier out of shame.

It really wasn't much of a movie, pretty dull as you can probably tell. There was a funny short film at the beginning, though, that was probably better than the movie itself. It was about an angel and a devil betting on the poor habits of a bread delivery man. The angel goes down in disguise to try to influence the man to be a slacker again, but he tells her how much he loves his job and how he does it. Full of minutes of shelf-packing action, this short was too funny.

In all, I give this movie three empty seats, for the asbestos pitchfork ends the devil guy wagered against the angel that the bread guy would go back to being a slacker.